The owner of an auto repair shop has the socially acceptable goal of providing a nice home and other material comforts for his family, but increasingly lacks enough business income to make this a reality. Eventually an acquaintance makes him aware that he could supplement his legitimate income by trafficking in stolen car parts through his shop. This discrepancy between socially approved goals and potentially deviant means of attaining them can be explained by:

Robert Merton's strain theory

Explanation:

Strain Theory

This simply stated that humans are involved in deviant behaviour if they are unable to achieve socially approved goals by legal means. Merton expanded the Durkheim's study of Anomie.

Robert Merton's Strain Theory

This simply stated that in a unequal society, the tension, anxiety or strain between socially approved goals and an individual's capacity to meet their target goals through socially approved methods or ways can lead to deviance as individuals reject either the goals or the means or both.

Strain leads to criminal and deviant behaviour due to the fact that strain between the cultural goal and the lack of legal means to achieve goals, people experience pressure that results in resorting to illegitimate means to achieve said goals.

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